Fourth Fun in Lordsburg!

We were happy to spend the fourth of July in Lordsburg with almost all of Rus' family. (Katie "fourthed" in Hawaii). Here are a few highlights of the weekend:

Emilee and Chip are homeless right now, getting ready to move to Utah for school in a few weeks. So their pet hedgehog Gypsy (who I call Chipsy), was able to entertain all the kids for just a little while. I think this was Gypsy's first time on grass.

Marianne hopes to be as fashionable as Emilee when she grows up, I'm sure. She's almost there, to be truthful...

Marianne has the special talent of wrapping anyone around her little finger with her cuteness and talkative sociability. Chip is especially susceptible to her charms.

I brought a little craft for the kids to do - "stained glass" stars. We made salt dough stars with cookie cutters and then filled the hole in the middle with clear pony beads and cooked them in the oven. They turned out pretty dark but the kids were happy with them.

Here are my kids with their coordinating shirts. Each family had a shirt color and ours was white. I let the kids pick out an animal, cut out a stencil on my silhouette, and then let them paint theirs with red, white, and blue paint. Bekah made hers a hedgehog just for Emilee. Mine was a gazelle (because that's what Rus calls me when I go on runs), and Rus had an eagle.

One of my favorite things about Lordsburg is the pool. The slide is the very best thing. It's not too big or scary, so all of the kids except Marianne can go down by themselves. Jacob kept track and said he thought he went down about 42 times! DeAnn coerced the adults into an underwater handstand contest and a round of chicken fighting. We spent hours there and everyone got plenty of fun and sun!

The women had a craft too. We did these simple pallet-like stars. I really like the navy one in the middle, Louise's. Mine is the red one next to the flag. Carla got creative and painted the flag on hers!

Emilee was awesome - she had games prepared for everyone to do. One night we played family feud, just the adults, boys vs. girls. The boys were terrible sports so it was even more irritating that they won. She also planned for the whole family to play human hungry hippos! It was hilarious! I really liked when they made Roger be the hungry hippo...and he overloaded the wheels on the cart so he couldn't go!

I painted all of the kids' faces and then all the moms got a turn too! Fireworks! We even somehow got all of the men to have a star on their faces - under duress, of course.

This is where we watched the fireworks from. It was a big dirt lot, but it was front and center for both the sunset and an amazing fireworks show! Roger and Louise must have had two dozen packages of buns, and they tried to invite enough people to come eat with us to use those all up. 

Here's another sibling shot from the next day after church. Who is that mountain man on the left?!

It was a great Fourth! God bless America!!